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This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 670,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

A game of Red Rover decides next president

Christopher Fox GrahamDeciphering Sedona

Unless you’ve been behind closed doors this week or catching up on all the New Year’s Day bowl games via TiVo, the biggest news this week was the Iowa caucuses.Every four years, the corn capital of America takes its focus off its native sons Tom Arnold and Ashton Kutcher and turns toward selecting our next president.Unlike typical blind ballot primaries, the Iowa caucuses are an odd throwback to our agrarian heritage.The premise is simple: neighbors gather in a town hall, church or farmer Jim’s big red barn and debate which person they like best, like a bad high school prom.One of the major parties – figure out which one — uses a straw poll, but admission to the caucus costs $35, so candidates often purchase tickets and give them out to supporters.This is different from buying votes, because, well, they say it is.The other major party has voters stand in designated areas for each candidate. For 30 minutes, they shout each candidate’s pros and cons trying to coax other voters to leave their group.Nothing says we have a modern 21st century government like choosing our leaders in a game of Red Rover.As some candidates’ support drops below 15 percent, they are no longer viable and the former supporters have to choose a new candidate to support and 30 more minutes of “will my candidate make it.”Kind of like musical chairs.In the end, the results are supposed to prognosticate the future election season.The turnout is historically miniscule. This year, 225,000 Democrats and 120,000 Republicans participated, slightly more than 0.15 percent of the country’s registered voters.In layman’s terms, it’s like determining the end of an hour-long football game in the first 3.8 seconds.In our microwave society, that brevity makes sense.Thankfully, Arizona has the foresight to hold its primary on what was once called Super Tuesday, but now Super Duper Tuesday, perhaps the lamest name for a calendar date since Weasel Stomping Day.The date places Arizona on the “forgettable states” list, when faced with the powerhouse delegate states of California, Illinois and New York.However, it also means that as candidates skip Arizona in favor of California, we’ll also dodge their negative ads, the slight swelling of anger when they mispronounce “Prescott” in speeches and a deluge of campaign promises that they’ll forget if and when they reach the White House.“Did I promise Arizona I’d protect its water, or was it Tennessee? It was all such a blur.”The results of Super Duper Tuesday on Feb. 5 will essentially leave voters with the two major candidates for the long, bitter run to November.While the particular process of primaries is almost silly, the matter behind it is not.This presidential election offers female, black, Hispanic, Italian, Mormon, senior citizen and second-generation immigrant candidates — not as fringe choices but as major front-runners for both parties.But what makes the 2008 election a milestone is not that candidates come from these groups, but that their minority statuses seem to matter so little.While in past years, a person’s gender or ethnicity was seen as a benefit or bane, in 2008, it seems to be more of a footnote.While voters and the media note the specific differences, the actual influence seemed to be negligible at best.Voters at the Iowa caucuses were gleefully choosing from a slate of candidates far different from their state’s demographic, with little concern about that difference.Whether Iowa voters predicted the future president during their popularity games, they chose candidates based on the content of their character.The prediction that race, gender and family heritage will cease to divide us less and less after 2008 is one any election-watcher can see coming.Deciphering Sedona is published every Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News. To comment, e-mail to cgraham@larsonnewspapers.com.

CFG the slam poet

Fox the Poet

Christopher Fox Grahamis a Montana-born boy raised in Arizona to be a poet, artist, and singer with unending wanderlust. He's fascinated with art and other shiny things, a good story will keep him captivated and silent as he soaks you in.

In truth, he is good at only three things: using language, kissing, and driving.

He has performed for MTV and on The Travel Channel's "Your Travel Guide" episode of Sedona. Aside from winning more than 100 poetry slams, he's published four books of poetry, most recently The Opposite of Camouflage, and won the 2012 Dylan Thomas Award for Excellence in the Written and Spoken Word.

A slam poet since 2001, he currently hosts the bimonthly Sedona Poetry Slam in West Sedona.

For nearly four years, he was the senior Copy Editor of the Sedona Red Rock News, and an arts reporter and a columnist. He wrote a weekly column "Sedona Underground," about the city's art scene. After leaving in May 2008, he was asked to return as Assistant Managing Editor in October 2009. He was promoted to News Editor in April 2012 and in August 2012 was promoted to Managing Editor, overseeing the Sedona Red Rock News,The Camp Verde Journal, Cottonwood Journal Extra, The Scene and The Village View.

He has won numerous personal and editorial newsroom awards from the Arizona Newspapers Association, including three awards for Best Headline.

He was the managing editor of Kudos, a weekly arts and entertainment publication of the Verde Independent. He was also managing editor of The Villager, a weekly news publication in the Village of Oak Creek.

He is one the six coordinators of GumptionFest a kickass, annual, one-day grassroots arts festival held in Sedona, this year in September. More than 100 artists and bands exhibit their work for free to more than 1,200 people.

In 2005, he founded the Sedona Poetry Open Mic, which he hosted biweekly at Java Love Cafe on second and fourth Tuesdays until 2012. A former venue included Random Acts of Coffee, in Sedona, which closed in June 2005. The venue named a drink after him which one can order an various coffeehouses in Sedona. The "Topher": A large soy chai with two (or three) shots of espresso. Serve iced or hot. He was member of the city of Sedona Child and Youth Commission for two years and chairman for another two years before the commission was dissolved in 2008.

He has been unofficially named "The Voice of the Underground," in Sedona for his column "Sedona Underground" that appeared every Friday in The Scene. for more than three years, featuring more than 150 artists.

He won the 2004 NORAZ Poets Grand Slam, the 2005 Arizona All-Star Poetry Slam, and was a member of the 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2012 and 2013 Flagstaff National Poetry Slam Teams. He was also a National Poetry Slam bout manager in 2003, venue manager in 2011, and Sedona Slammaster in 2012, 2013 and 2014, sponsoring the city's first three Sedona National Poetry Slam Teams.

He believes that all slam poets are Jedis.

He has been thrown out of six movie theaters, 18 bars, a Las Vegas nightclub with his girlfriend, a public pool, two malls, four golf courses, one bowling alley, five dorms, one airport, one pet store, a now-defunct nonprofit poetry organization ... and Canada. Seriously.